


The Kid Who Saved Batman

by The_Dancing_Walrus



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Telltale Series (Video Game)
Genre: Character Development, Curtis is Awesome, Gen, Growing Up, Heroism, Past, curtis centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 20:39:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8860210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Dancing_Walrus/pseuds/The_Dancing_Walrus
Summary: Curtis has a secret, the big kind, the kind you grow around the way a tree might grow around an iron fence.He’s the kid who saved Batman.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DragonTail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonTail/gifts).



Curtis has a secret, the big kind, the kind you grow around the way a tree might grow around an iron fence.

 

He’s the kid who saved Batman.

 

He was fostered, for a little while, in Gotham. He can’t really remember what his foster parents were like now, although sometimes he can hear them screaming in his nightmares-

 

What he remembers is footsteps in the house while he huddled in the dark. He remembers the hidden door under the stairs bursting open and a shadow, huge and terrible, towering over him-

 

Then it shrank.

 

He remembers that they talked, in a vague sort of way. He remembers the grey and black of the suit and the twitching shape of the cape.

 

He was never really sure if the Batman was actually a man in a suit or something strange and may be magical. Now he’s seen real magic and he’s even less sure.

 

He remembers the sound of glass breaking and the way the Batman dived in front of him, shielding him. He remembers the rattle and blast of gunfire.

 

And he remembers picking up that broken chair and hitting the- he’d thought it was an alien but it must have been a prototype drone-

 

He remembers knocking it right out of the sky.

 

And, seared in his memory the way nothing else from his childhood is, he remembers the Batman’s huge, heavy hand on his shoulder, he remembers the Batman’s voice-

 

“Whatever happens, you’re the kid who saved Batman.”

 

Curtis has never told anyone that. But he’s carried it, like gold-dust around his heart.

 

He whispered it to himself the first night without his foster parents and again after he was adopted and had nightmares the evil alien would come and take his new parents too.

 

Curtis has known for a long, long time that he can do anything because of those small, precious words.

 

He’s mentioned Gotham once or twice, since he fell into this whole super-heroing thing. And it felt so natural, braiding his hair back and putting on the paint for the first time. It felt so right.

 

He never mentioned the Batman.

 

He sort of knows what the others all think despite that. He’s pretty sure Diggle hasn’t heard of the Batman and Oliver thinks he isn’t real.

 

Felicity brought it up once though, flushed and giggling into her drink. ‘Who thought the Batman was real?’

 

Thea had laughed like it was ridiculous, because may be, _may be_ , someone could be behind the urban legends, but why a _bat?_ Rory wondered whether the Batman was someone like him, wrapped in myth no one else thought was real.

 

Felicity had elbowed Curtis.

 

“Well? You said you lived in Gotham for a while. Is **the Batman** real?”

 

Curtis smiles. Curtis shrugs.

 

He thinks about a voice that carried him through every bully’s blow, at grade school, at junior school, at high school. Every taunt in the corridor and every bad joke he overheard.

 

Curtis is lucky really. He’s never had to doubt himself. The other people around him, throwing themselves into this life, trying desperately to help everyone they can, they’re doing it because they’re hurting. They’re doing it because the core they’ve grown around is like a sea urchin lodged inside, painful however they move. And Curtis _gets it_ , he’s lost people and he’s seen the world’s ugliness.

 

But he’s grown around a shield not a spike. It lets him smile and breath deep and really live in a way some of the others struggle to.

 

He wonders sometimes, at night when he’s come home, washed the paint off his face and unpicked the braids, if there are kids out there in Starling who remember the Green Arrow the way Curtis remember the Batman.

 

He wonders if some day a kid will remember Mister Terrific that way.

 

When the call comes in from Felicity and he finds out about the Dominators he feels a lot of things. Amazement, awe, that other life exists. Almost betrayed that they’re meeting it this way. Worried about Oliver and Thea going out into the field-

 

When it all goes wrong Curtis stays calm, he stays focused. He doesn’t once doubt that they’ll win the day.

 

After all, he’s the kid who saved Batman.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been playing the Batman Telltale game and there's a point in it that really touched me. You're investigating a murder of a middle aged couple and while you're scanning for clues you find a little boy, their foster child, huddled away under the stairs. 
> 
> The conversation option I chose, to reach out and try to comfort the kid led to a chain of events where he saved Batman's life. And before you leave Batman turns to this child and tells them softly that whatever happens they'll always be the kid that saved Batman. 
> 
> For some reason that made me think of Curtis and well, you've read the result.


End file.
